Great fall colors

I don’t often get to ride the ski lifts on a pleasant fall afternoon, but I did this weekend. Roundtop was holding its annual ski swap, and one of the ski lifts was open for rides. The fall color was past the peak of brightness, but it made up for that with every leaf on every tree now showing color. Saturday was a tad hazy but the views were still great.

Riding the ski lift is fun, and the round trip only took about 15 minutes. A lot of people rode the lift up the mountain and then opted to walk down, but I can walk down the mountain any day I want to, and I was hoping the added elevation of the lift would allow for a slightly different perspective on the views.

The leaves have arrived at the point where the next rain or decent wind storm will bring down almost all of them. Tuesday and Wednesday shows a chance for drizzle, which probably won’t be enough to do the trick. Saturday might bring a storm strong enough to do it. I’ll keep hoping.

Each day more and more juncos arrive, though they either haven’t found my feeders yet or they’re not yet hungry enough to want to visit the feeder. Right now I have only the forest regulars—titmice, chickadees of both the Carolina and Black-capped species, white-breasted nuthatch, downy woodpecker and red-bellied woodpecker. For some reason, I haven’t yet seen a cardinal at the feeders, and the goldfinch have been ignoring the thistle as well. Likely, that simply means that they are all foraging well enough in the woods and don’t need the food from my feeders just yet. They will return soon enough.